Power Hungry
by Tridentwatch
Summary: What if Harry had no friends, no hope, no family out there. Growing up bitter and angry in the Dursley household leaves him... bereft of the normalcy of human emotions. His only love is power, and he has the will to seek it. Slytherin!Harry
1. Chapter 1

AN: Sporadically updated, so don't expect a lot just enjoy what's there okay. This is about the hunger to seek power, which everybody knows what its like so I am trying to relate the normal human emotion and taking it to an extreme. Magnification of something considered to be dangerous....

Power Hungry

Summary: What if Harry had no friends, no hope, no family out there. Growing up bitter and angry in the Dursley household leaves him... bereft of the normalcy of human emotions. His only love is power, and he has the will to seek it. Slytherin!Harry  
Chapter One: The Dursleys  
The house Harry lived in looked very normal. Some wizards would be surprized at the modesty of the house, just a four bedroom town house on Privet Drive. They would be even more surprised at the fact that Harry lived in the cupboard, slept in a cot, and ate very little.  
He wasn't fed well but he did not starve either. He had enough nutrients, enough to go on, but still the scrawny look that he held in his childhood remained throughout his life, never quite leaving him. The only part about him that did not look cheap, that did not look drowned in poverty were his eyes. They were a brilliant green. Anybody could see the emotion shining through them. Hate, bitterness, a tinge of despair, and most of all a desperate hunger for change, for power.  
Harry Potter wanted it.  
And he would get it one day, he promised himself a week before his eleventh birthday. He made a vow, when he was cleaning the bathroom tub after dinner. He looked out the window sill, and saw a shooting star from the open window.  
And then he wished it.  
He wanted power, he wanted power power power.  
His entire being screamed for it, hungered for it, the power to control others, to do what he wanted.  
And as if fate dictated some eddict that Harry would get what he wanted in time to come, well... the time came.  
One week later...  
Harry Potter went out the door to get the mail, in the morning like he always did. He lived a quiet obedient life, hiding his true nature away from everyone. It would do no good for them to see him as anything other than obedient, because that way he got what he want most of the time. He got to eat food with the Dursleys, almost as much as he wanted.  
He never truly did of course, or else Petunia would scream at him, tell him he was being too greedy and ban him from the table for the next meal to teach him a lesson. So he pretended to be a good boy.  
And here he was getting the mail, expecting a normal day for him. He shuffled through the letters with a glance, taking in the words instantly. He was always smart, intelligent, the school had said. Not that the Dursleys cared in the slightest.  
The teachers thought him almost to be a prodigy, almost. Yes, intelligence was there beneath those green eyes but it was a lazy sort of intelligence, a calculating mind and an imagination that extended in every action he did. He was smart, but he was not smart enough to skip grades or anything. That would attract too much attention, and Harry doubted he had the ability to do so anyways. SOme days he wondered what life would be like if he was truly a genius, then people would pay attention to him, coddle him, but he wasn't. He was just intelligent enough to get good marks, and sometimes make Dudley jealous.  
Which hurt if Dudley ever caught him.  
And that rarely happened. Harry was too fast, too cunning to be caught, to be trapped like a wild animal.  
He looked through the letters and saw a parchment gray type letter that was addressed to him in green ink. He opened it right then and there, his eyebrows raised in an incredulous motion. It couldn't be, a letter addressed to him from some phony baloney school of magic? He laughed inside, but kept the latter under his shirt, trapped beneath his waistband as a little momento, a prank of this calibre could not - should not - be forgotten.  
He handed the letter bundle to Vernon, and said, "Excuse me, uncle?"  
His uncle was reading the newspaper, reclined on a blue armchair with a mug of hot coffee that Harry had prepared at six in the morning in his arm. "Yes?" He said gruffly in response.  
"I was wondering if I could go to the library today? School's not in session but I want to be prepared."  
"Do your chores, yet, boy?"  
"Can I do them after? I will only be gone for an hour."  
Vernon grunted, which Harry took to be a yes.  
The Dursleys did not mind Harry and his studious behaviour, in fact they encouraged it. Once, Harry heard Vernon mutter, perhaps a bit of good knowledge would stamp the freak out of him.  
Harry knew they were hiding something from him, perhaps something about his parents. He had never seen any pictures of them, nor had he learned of their occupations.  
Petunia told him they were useless bums who got killed in a car crash. Harry didn't quite believe it. Something was strange about him - about how the Dursleys treated him.  
And he knew what it was. His parents were probably really rich, and just like in the books he sometimes read, the Dursleys wanted to steal his inheritance.  
He was almost convinced of this, in fact, and tried his best to look for James and Lily Potter in the library records, from time to time. He read through a lot of newspapers, dating back several years, and kept a small notebook recording anything of incidince that would help him find something about his parents, something in the news about a car crash.  
Harry's search had come up with little, however just recently he found an article in a very old newspaper about a Lily Evans who had won a science competition when she was ten.  
It was a small thing, less than an article. Just a tiny box in the middle of of the newspaper, but there was something there that Harry treasured, a picture.  
It wasn't in colour or anything but Harry thought he could see a tiny bit of resemblence between the woman and himself. However it might just be his imagination.  
As Harry walked in to the public library, greeting Mrs Alsoph with a nod and a smile, he made his way to the tables and took from his backpack some stationary, a pen and a paper. He painstakingly composed a reply to the nonsense letter that went along the lines of something like this:  
To Whomsoever It May Concern:  
Thank you for the invitation, and while it seems to be attractive enough, I must decline. Although I know very little - or nothing at all - about magic I do know that it can be very dangerous. Once when I was riding my cousin's bicycle, I tripped on an overgrown root and would have tumbled head over heals in the forest trail. But I didn't. My bicycle flew, like a plane or something except much slower, almost levitated I might say.  
You might not think that is harmful but if power like that can be controlled, well I will have a hard time resisting the corruption that power inevitably brings.  
Thank you,  
Harry pOtter.  
Harry knew that the prank was a litte bit strange, creative yes, probably done by Mr. Roberts, his english teacher as an assignment.  
Yes, he would write his response and mail it to "Hogwarts" if he had to, but there was no returning address. It said just send your reply via owl.  
Wow, these people really take their pranks seriously he thought with an inner smile. He reread his letter and his smile dropped, leaving him cold and empty.  
The incident with the bicycle was real. It had actually happened once, a long time ago, but it had happened. The incident resisted all the physical laws of areodynamics, but his memory was quite good, he knew it had happened exactly as he had written in the letter.  
With a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach he walked out the door and on to the sunny street, looking around - looking for owls.  
And there it was, one on the rooftop of the library, a brown fat thing with black eyes that seemed to stare directly at Harry.  
Harry held his letter up in the air, and owl swooped down.  
Grabbed it before Harry could change his mind, before he could accept the offer, if there was such a one. No! He thought, this was not how it was supposed to go, power offered to him on a platter and he turned it down?  
This was... perhaps it was just a random crazy owl who liked to grab pieces of paper. But the coincidence of the letter and the owl together... Harry's mind worked rapidly and instantly he saw the answer to the solution. He would simply write another letter, this one, a real response. He had thought the Hogwarts invitation was a lie, a prank, but what if it was not?

What if the Invitation was something more? A change, a new start, a break point from the life he currently lived? An opportunity to become powerful? Rich and famous perhaps, perhaps not that exactly.  
But power at his fingertips. Yes, yes, this was it. He knew it was real, he had done things before, strange little things that he paid little attention to but he knew he was different.  
Perhaps this was what he had been seeking all along in the library newspapers, not information about his parents but about himself. Memories rushed toward the forefronts of his mind, things like floating pieces of chalk in the air when nobody was looking and everybody was talking amongst themselves while the teacher had gone out, or stuff like turning the librarian's hair blue once when she wouldn't let him check out a book because he didn't have a library card and the Dursleys wouldn't make him one, and things like the bicycle incident, or how once he had ended up on the roof of the school when Dudley and his gang was playing Harry hunting.  
And then there was the dark things... he remembered when he was so angry tears were welled up in his eyes. He hated the Dursleys, how they would not feed him, or give him presents at Christmas, and it was in the morning, when Dudley was opening up his mountain of presents and he had nothing, absolutely nothing.  
Marge was talking to Vernon about the economy. She was his uncle's sister, and he absolutely loathed her and her dogs. The feeling was quite mutual. He felt the anger and hate sing in his veins, rush to his head, shouting inside him to grab the kitchen knife that he used to make their breakfasts and stab something or someone.  
He went outside to cool off, in the backyard he was alone. Alone except for Marge's dog, who growled at him.  
Harry walked toward the middle of the yard, and the dog followed at his heels, growling.  
Harry turned, stared down at the dog, and walked away. Twenty minutes letter when Marge went out to feed her dog some biscuits, she found him lying on the grass, dead.  
Just plain dead, no marks or anything on him. Harry was scared he would get caught but his quick mind easily came up with a thousand excuses all at once that he could use.  
And it felt good, so good to just kill, to let out his anger, to get his revenge. That was when the thirst for power really grew inside him, like a blooming flower. He wanted it, wanted to control others, wanted them to fear him, to obey him.  
Now, as he rewrote his letter, he wondered if this was the turning point of his life, when he would finally gain the abilities he needed to truly demand his retribution. Power, pure and strong, brimming with a certain allure that was all at once a lust and a love and a hate all at once. It meant everything to him.  
He might have blown it off once thinking the offer was nothing, but he would not do it again. When he went back outside with his new letter in his hands, and held it up in the air, he was surprised.  
No owl swooped down to grab it.  
That made Harry very very sad.

Hogwarts was truly alive in the summer, Dumbledore thought, peaceful yes, but vibrant with its own energy, preparing itself to accept a whole army of students in a few months. The lake rippled in the warm wind and the sun was shining brilliantly down on the forest.  
He watched the scene with a calm and pleased look on his face, as the beauty of the summer reflected the contentment in his heart. He held a letter in his hand. A letter from a most intriguing student, someone whose parents he had taught and made Head Boy and Head Girl, the highest honor Hogwarts had to bestow upon her students.  
The letter was from a boy with a simple heart, a true heart. He would be in Gryffindor, there was no doubt about that, should he accept the invitation. Dumbledore knew that Harry would, if he went himself and paid him a visit.  
Yes, the letter really made him happy, becaue it proved what a good upbringing Harry had, to resist power, to resist corruption and to say in a thoughtful manner such wisdom that would be hard to find in today's witch and wizard graduates. To resist power spoke of a strength of soul and it would be enough, Dumbledore thought.  
It was enough. When Voldemort came back, Dumbledore knew Harry would be perfect for his task, but for now he had to play it a little delicately, a little sensitively. He was dealing with a boy who did not want to learn magic because he was afraid it would corrupt his good nature, and that was a perfectly reasonable argument, in fact more than reasonable.  
It was true, Dumbledore thought with a sigh, magic led to a thirst for power in almost anyone, most especially the Slytherins. Magic was power in liquid form, in the form of physical reality. Few would or could resist the hypnotic allure.  
With a hum and a spring in his steps, Dumbledore composed his own letter to Harry, and as he petted Fawkes absentmindedly he marvelled at his good fortune, at the good fortune of the entire wizarding world.  
The boy who lived had a pure heart.  
Oh how wrong he was.

Harry loved to ride Dudley's bicycle, and it was not as if Dudley cared all that much since that fat boy hated sports of any kind except for Harry hunting of course. Harry took the red bike out of the shed and began to peddle down Privet drive, turned a left, hooked a right, and was soon on his way to his favorite riding trail.  
He had done his chores. The wind flew in his hair and everything was great, sun shining, sky a clear blue with a few fluffy clouds. Summer vacation was here and Harry would do his best to enjoy every moment of it. Still, he could not keep his thoughts away from the letter, and what it meant. He told himself he was just imagining things, there was no way that letter could be real. The owl was just a fluke of nature, perhaps it had seen something shiny on the paper, yes the ink, and it wanted the ink shining thing on the paper and grabbed it. That was all.  
Harry wasn't so sure anymore though. He was confused and he hated confusion, not knowing something. Everything was in managebale chunks in his life, everything he did had boundries and rules that he followed, and he did not break the rules, not unless it was worth breaking, like stealing rides on Dudley's bike.  
Breaking rules were bad, and Harry knew that if he was bad he wouldn't get fed. That didn't quite stop him so much as put a cautionary note in his actions.  
Riding into the forest trail where shadow and wind cooled the sweat beads running down his foreheads was a luxurious experience, but it still did not take away the confusion, the burning in his belly for that which he held most dear, the power of magic. Was it real, he wondered, was magic something he could learn, control, an art form? Or was it a crude thing, a hammer and anvil compared to a surgeon's knife... could he learn it on his own if Hogwarts did not invite him again, if he was declined admission?  
Was it even real?  
He stopped peddling as the question hit him like a brick. He knew it was, knew it in his heart yet his mind told him it could not be true, just could not. Those experiences were mere coincidinces, the dog he had killed probably just died of a heart attack. Who ever heard of killing an animal just by staring at it? It was insane!  
He stopped as he entered a clearing of grass, next to a pond. There were a few flies lazily floating over the green murky slime of the pond. Harry let the bike fall on the ground, and sat there on the grass, staring into the pond. He watched frogs leap in and out, and crikets chirp around it. He was at the hub of nature, his favorite spot. He took out a crumpled peanut butter jelly sandwich from the pocket of his jeans, and unwrapped the plastic on it, watching the sandwich with an excited appetizing grin.  
Today was a good day, he thought, as he took a bite of the sandwich. He ate the sandwich slowly, enjoying every little chunk of it and then wiping his sticky hands on the grass, he took out his letter, his Hogwarts invitation.  
The green ink was startling, because nobody used green. Vernon always used black ink, or blue sometimes. But who would use green ink? He examined the neat pensmanship and thought that if this was truly a prank, it was very well done.  
"Hello Harry Potter," said an aged voice from behind him. Harry jumped, and whirled around.  
An old man greeted him, wearing a blue robe with white polka dots littered on it like specks of pepper on an omelete. "A beautiful day well spent for a young boy like you, is it not?" He asked.  
Harry nodded slowly, and then said in a demanding voice, "How is it that you know my name? Were you the one who sent me the letter?"  
The old man nodded, "I am the headmaster of Hogwarts, Harry, and my name is-"  
"Albus Dumbledore," Harry said, "I know, it says in the letter."  
"I understand your concerns. Reading your letter, it seems to me that you are mature beyond your age, Harry."  
"The letter I sent you was a mistake," Harry said quickly, "I changed my mind, I want to learn magic?"  
The twinkling blue eyes dimmed a bit, but then brightened again, and the old man beamed at him, gave him a wide smile, and said, "What is it that changed your mind? You were adamant about power being able to corrupt you."  
"I thought to myself that power can be used for good things too," Harry said, thinking on his feet. It was obvious the old man respected what he had said in the letter, but Harry had meant it as a joke. It did not fully explain his true intentions.  
"And I want proof," Harry said, "I want to know the truth of it, so show me something."  
Dumbledore chuckled, "Very well then," he said and his blue eyes glowed slightly with hidden strength. He pulled out a piece of thin rectangular looking wood, a little rod it might have been, and waved it in the air. Harry watched with wide eyes as his bike turned into a large gorrila. It was black and furry and growled at Harry.  
"Is that good enough?" Dumbledore asked, "transfiguration has always been my specialty you know, and there are so many things you can do with a good magical education. You are indeed right, this power can be used to help people, to aid in places and situations where your skills will be absolutely necessary."  
Harry still staring at the gorrilla, said in a low whisper, "So it's true then, I'm special, I've always known it too." He whispered. "I just, I can't believe it."  
"It's a hard thing to take in," Dumbledore said, "But with time magic will become second nature to you."  
*** time skip ****  
"Harry Potter!" called Professor McGonnagall. Harry looked at the great hall and at the whispers that seemed to start up. He frowned, he was famous, Dumbledore had told him when he took him shopping in Diagon Alley. It was quite a stir. Yet Harry felt there was something off, something strange about the wizard, the old man who kept staring at Harry like he was... a piece on a chessboard, a calculating gaze beneath a shroud of kindness. Harry looked at Dumbledore, sitting in the headmaster's chair in the front of the great hall. Dumbledore nodded at Harry and he nodded back reluctantly as he walked toward the sorting hat.  
It looked old and bad, the sorting hat was practically ripping at the seams. Harry put it on. He felt a crawling sensation in his forehead, and for a brief moment his scar lit up with pain.  
That's the scar I got from Voldemort, he thought viciously.  
"You seem hell bent on revenge, Harry," The sorting hat said, its voice was ancient and filled with magic, as old as the castle.  
"Yes," Harry said.  
The hat sorted him.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Harry Potter the Ravenclaw

Life as a claw was not what he expected it to be, books and studying was a high priority of course but for most of the members of Ravenclaw house, there was a certain expectation of genius. A touch of creativity and boyish enthusiasm that was borderline neurotic.

He worked hard, and so did his friends Johhny and Peter, both muggle born students, both smart, talented, and what was more, both ignorant of his status as the boy who lived.

Harry hated hero worship, he was plain uncomfortable basking in its glow. He did not see how it would accomplish his goals, how it would get him to a position of power, to be powerful.

Harry always wondered why the hat hadn't sorted him in Slytheirn.

He had his answer in his first potions class.

Snape was a bat, or looked like one. With a bored expression on his face he took rollcall, until he stopped at Harry's name. His eyes looked up, clouded with emotion.

"So, our newest celebrity basks in his limelight. How does it feel, Harry, knowing you take credit for your mother's sacrifice?"

The class was hushed. Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs stared at Snape in astonishment.

Harry shrugged, "I don't know," he said, "I never knew my mother."

And that was that.

Snape bothered him no more, but Harry suspected the Potions professor had another plan, knew of what he had started. Because by the end of the day many people repeatedly asked him about his mother, about what sacrifice she did exactly.

Harry expertly tried to evade the questions, and hid in the library behind his books. It was there that he met Hermione Granger. She had bushy brown hair but what Harry noticed the most was how she put her wand behind her ear as she read the "Articles of Basic Arithmancy."

"Isn't that a little too advanced for first years?" Harry said as she approached.

Hermione stared at him, like she was a scientist dissecting a bug. "You're Harry Potter," she said at last.

"And you're Hermione, huflfepuff, right?"

She nodded slightly timidly. Harry shut up then, and started to read his potions book. Dinner would be ready in half an hour and he wanted to be prepared for the next lecture two days hence.

Harry looked up to stare at the clock on the wall. The seconds were ticking by slowly. He tried to focus on his potions book but just couldn't concentrate.

Briefly he noticed Professor Quirrel enter the library, a book on dragon eggs hidden underneath his arms.

His scar burned slightly. The professor turned to look at him with a gaze Harry thought was almost manovelent. He shuddered.

Life passed on.

Months passed.

Harry studied hard, played and laughed, and basically kept his head down, his nose clean. Once in a while he would talk to Hermione about her main interest, Arithmancy. She explained it was a sort of higher mathematics, taking into account the rivers of magic that flowed in the world, and tapping into them to perform high level spells.

That got Harry interested.

He read and read. His eyes were frequently bloodshot and his dress robes dishevelled.

And yet he continued to read obsessively, voraciously. People began whispering things behind his back, calling him names, sneering down at him.

He was second class, a nerd, a teacher pleaser.

Transfiguration was his favorite class. He would sit in the middle row, and he would be completely still as Minerva went over the basics of the lecture, absorbing the lesson in all its integrity.

He never wrote down any notes. Once, Peter asked him how he would study without notes and he tapped his forehead, and replied, "I visualize them, Peter, and I try to remember all the lessons we ever had every day so I won't ever forget them."

Peter just shook his head, and mumbled something about playing exploding snaps with Johnny later after they completed homework.

Harry shook his head in refusal, and continued to read.

The weather turned for the worse in October. It started to snow, and the wind was chilling. Harry got the habit of taking long walks to relax. His eyes hurt because he read so much and he needed time to unwind. An eleven year old could not keep his nose in his books all day.

He met Hagrid when he was walking too close to the Forbidden Forest. The man was a half giant, and while Harry was a bit scared, he was more curious as he watched Hogwarts' groundskeeper approach.

"You musta be mighty cold," Hagrid said in a gruff voice, "Come over to yonder hut, and we'll cook some tea, hurr hurr."

Harry would have refused but he was cold, he was freezing in fact and his fingers felt like ice. He nodded in acceptance and followed Hagrid to his hut.

The hut was quite homely, nice in a foolish goofy sort of way. Harry waited as Hagrid poured a cup of tea for him. It was black tea, and Harry knew its properties from a book he had read about old magic.

"Did you know the tribes in South Africa used to use tea in their rituals?" Harry said when he could not stand the silence any longer.

Hagrid looked interested, "Oh? You read about it in yonder book did ya?"

"Yes I did in fact," Harry said, "They put tea leaves in a circle and did the rain dance in it. Sometimes it worked, sometimes their gods got angry and made a volcano erupt. It's fifty fifty with old magic. Can't trust it like we can trust good old Latin and wands."

"Dumbledore told us yonder while back your momma did a sacrifice," Hagrid said, "Some sort of old magic ritual that got the Dark Lord falled down, he did. Hurr Hurr."

Harry peered at Hagrid's crossbow, "The headmaster knows a lot about my life, I should talk to him one day." Hagrid nodded at that and encouraged him to do so.

The visit was lively as Hagrid began to talk about dragons some more, and then Harry begged off, said he had homework to finish.

He did not have any work to do, just did not want to listen to Hagrid's strange manner of speech and his slightly wierd way of saying "Hurr Hurr"

Harry attributed it to Hagrid's giant blood. They were not the brightest of creatures.

The month of October was a lonely month for Harry. Johnny and Peter did not spend a lot of time with him any more, and Harry only encouraged it.

His books were his best friends and he liked it that way. As usual he was top of the class, best marks, top student and he got a lot of calculating looks from some students, as well as a few teachers including Professor Snape.

Harry did not speak much, kept his head down. Inside his blood was boiling, positively yearning to learn more, to learn further, go deeper into magic, into the very nature of it.

He was heavily interested in "Old Magic."

It was the magic of the gods, the ones who were said to be the source of magical energy in the universe, an unlimited well pool of energy that all witches and wizards tapped when doing their spells, performing their rituals.

The power of Old Magic had saved Harry's life, deflected the undeflectable, stopped the unstoppable.

And Harry had a feeling that was only the smallest taste of the power of Old Magic.

Books on that subject were scarce, just a dozen or so, but Harry devouvered them. He read them over and over, and by December, his grades were starting to slip due to his obession.

He rationilized that he had the entire Christmas break to catch up on school work and continued to study the Old Magic.

He was particularly attracted to the idea of doing magic - untraceable by the ministry - without a wand.

Then he could control the Dursleys. So with an intensity that surprised even him, he studied, and time passed on.

Days turned into nights.

Nights into days.

Harry was oblivious, listening to the droning of teachers and seeing nothing but the printed words on ancient parchment.

His eyes began to weaken. He had to see Madam Pomfrey to get a new pair of glasses. It put a dent in the money he had brought with him from Gringotts. He barely had enough for next years supplies.

He had intended the money to last him two years.

But the magical glasses he recieved were the best - highest quality - and would last a life time, adapting to the wizard who wore it.

In all, Harry was satisfied with his life.

But that would soon change when he heard of the unicorns.


End file.
